Cash registers traditionally have functioned to monitor and record commercial transactions in retail establishments. Located at the point of sale (POS), these devices have permitted the merchant to use clerical employees to handle financial transactions without particularly close supervision. Conventionally, cash registers incorporate a keyboard, display showing the customer the amount of the transaction, a cash drawer which opens only following the entry of sale data through the keyboard, and a printer for providing a receipt and for maintaining a journal.
As electronic processing technology has developed, the above functions have been enhanced to improve operator performance and achieve savings in labor. In the latter regard, efficiencies are realized with improved operator keying due to improved keyboard design, highly visible displays, operator prompts and instantaneous calculations of tax, sub-totals, totals and change. Further efficiencies, for outlets having extensive inventories may be realized through the use of a variety of tag reader systems employing bar codes and the like.
A selection of the degree of sophistication of POS device systems generally is predicated upon cost factors, as well as the degree of inventory and accounting control required by the retail establishment. The more elaborate systems available in the marketplace generally are referred to as "integrated POS systems" and are seen to involve a larger number of POS terminals which are networked under the control of a "back room" or regionally situated computer having significant programming capabilities. The POS terminals themselves for these integrated systems are basic in a technical sense, having very limited and software specific logic capabilities. Over the recent past, economic considerations involved in the selection of POS equipment have favored investment in integrated POS systems where five or more POS terminals are required. Marketing anaylsis has shown that about 85 percent of retail outlets employ five or fewer POS locations and thus, with some exceptions as are seen, for example, in fast food and bookstore operations, cost considerations limit the majority of retailers to cash register devices of lesser sophistication. Generally, these less expensive terminals employ programmable processors but the devices are of a special purpose nature having limited memory and are not readily programmed to change their functions in accordance with the particular desires of a given retail establishment. Further the devices do not carry out inventory control nor do they have the capabilities which are available in the now ubiquitous personal computer.
Cash register equipment has been made which simply combines the readily programmable general purpose computer with peripheral devices such as printers, CRT monitors and cash drawers to evolve a stand-alone POS terminal with wide programming capabilities. These terminals have not found acceptance in the marketplace, however, for a variety of reasons. Principal among these reasons is the relative slowness of the computer devices in carrying out basic cash register functions. It may be recalled that currently marketed basic cash register terminals include cash register specific software in a hardware system which achieves requisitely higher operational speeds. However, where the general purpose computer is programmed to emulate a cash register, from the point in time of a given key actuation by the operator, too lengthy an interval persists until items are displayed at the CRT monitor and computations are concluded to printout a receipt. Further, the employee-clerk usually called upon to use such a device is confronted with the environment of a computer, which appears complex, as compared with the familiar, easy to understand and operate cash register. Often, conventional typewriter structured keyboards typically employed with computers are used with these terminals which are difficult for clerical help to use. Notwithstanding the above, where the disadvantages of the integration of a general purpose computer with a POS cash egister function can be avoided, significant business advantage will accrue to an important very large segment of the retail marketing service industry.